Christmas Memories
by ElouiseBates
Summary: Some scattered Christmas one-shots across LMM's world
1. Mummy

**Author's Note: **I'm hoping to compile a few Christmas one-shots, taken from my LMM fanfic world, between now and the actual holiday. Maybe even include a couple from stories not written but simmering in the back of my brain (ie, a Valancy/Barney Christmas tale; maybe even a glimpse into the Story Girl fic I'm contemplating). In any case, I hope you enjoy. Merry Christmas.

* * *

"Mummy, Mummy!" Red-cheeked, eyes glowing from exercise and excitement, scarves muffling their faces almost to their nose-tips, three excited children burst through the front door, pouring into the kitchen, wriggling like giddy puppies, all clamouring to be heard.

"Mummy, we found the most beautiful tree, it's the perfect shape and size--"

"Mummy, I wanted a bigger one, a huge one, big enough to fill the whole parlour, but the others said no, this one was big enough--"

"Mummy, when can we start decorating? Daddy says we have to wait until the tree settles, but I don't want to wait--"

"Ooh, Mummy, is that hot chocolate? How did you know--"

She smiled at their eager faces, so dear to her heart, each one. Behind them, her husband of less than a year grinned at her, no less excited than the children.

"Well, Mummy? Don't you want to see the tree?"

"Of course!" she answered, wiping her hands on her apron and letting four pairs of hands tug her out to the verandah, where reposed an adorable little fir tree, snow still sticking to its green branches.

"Oh, it is perfect!" she enthused, winning triumphant squeals from two of the three. The other frowned, twisting his dark face into a scowl.

"I thought for sure you'd want a big tree, like me."

She pulled him into a hug and whispered something into his ear that made his grin spread so wide it threatened to burst off his face.

"What did you say, Mummy?" the little girl asked as she danced around the tree, touching its branches reverently, the late afternoon sunshine reflecting off her copper hair in dazzling rays.

"That's our secret," she answered teasingly. "Don't you know not to ask questions around Christmas? Now, who wants hot chocolate and Christmas cookies?"

"Did you bake the cookies, Mummy?" the oldest boy asked dubiously.

She tried to look affronted at the unspoken comment on her cooking abilities, but only succeeded in bursting into merry laughter, joined after a moment by her family.

"No, love, your Aunt Jessie brought them by earlier … she knows, as well as you do, my inability to bake anything worth consumption."

"Aunt Jessie's a swell cook," her dark-haired charmer said enthusiastically, abandoning the tree for the kitchen. The baby of the family followed, tugging her father along with her, but the oldest lingered a moment, cuddling up beside this new mother to say,

"Aunt Jessie may be a swell cook, but I'd still rather have you as my Mummy. The only thing that would have made finding the tree better would have been if you could have come with us."

"But then," she said softly, kissing his golden head, "you wouldn't have had the fun of coming home to me."

He threw his arms around her--an unusual act of affection in the usually reserved lad--and agreed that that was almost worth not having her with them on their expedition.

* * *

After the hot chocolate and truly delectable Christmas cookies, the boys set up the Christmas tree in the parlour, while she sat next to the little girl and helped her paste gold and silver paper together into chains, for hanging on the tree "when it was ready," as the small one explained confidentially.

Later yet, after supper, the children reluctantly climbed the stairs to their beds, only slightly comforted by the promise that they could start hanging ornaments just as soon as they woke up in the morning.

Alone in the parlour, looking at the bare tree, husband and wife snuggled together for a long moment. Patrick Samuels smiled into his beloved's shining grey-green eyes.

"Our first Christmas, darling. Don't you want to know what I got for you?"

Di Samuels nee Blythe shook her head contentedly. "It's no use teasing me, Patrick. I never was one for wanting to know beforehand my presents--that was always Shirley and Jem. Besides, this year, I've already received the best Christmas present I could ever have."

"What?" Patrick pulled away slightly, a mock frown on his face. "Did someone besides Jessie Wright stop by while the children and I were out tree-hunting?"

Di laughed and poked him in the ribs. "No, silly." She stared into the dying embers of the fire, trying to form her thoughts into words. Walter had been the eloquent one of the family; Nan and Jem and Rilla all had their own way with words. Di and Shirley, however, had missed their mother's gift of a silver-tongue, and both struggled with how to put their deepest feelings into words.

"This afternoon, when I saw you four coming back from the woods, dragging the tree behind you … listening to them chatter on, sharing secrets with Bran, working with Polly on the paper chains, hearing Peter say he'd rather have me for a mother than the best cook in Avonlea … After so many years of loneliness and struggling, Patrick, I finally have a family. Instead of dozens of orphans under my roof, I now have three children I can call my own.

"The best Christmas gift anyone could give me, you gave when you married me and we adopted these three children.

"It's hearing them call me Mummy."

Patrick kissed Di's shining head, and agreed silently that not the most expensive jewels or finest raiment could ever mean more.

The best Christmas presents were in the heart.


	2. Snowflake

Shirley and Cecily Blythe's second Christmas was also their last. While some of their acquaintance, including Cecily's own mother, thought that they should spend this holiday season already mourning their upcoming final separation, the young couple had decided on that October day when they first learned that Cecily would not survive the spring that they would make the most of their remaining days together. There would be time enough for grief and sorrow after; they would not let the future spoil their today.

Dr. Morris had confined the nearly-five-month pregnant Cecily to her bed or the sofa downstairs, so Shirley alone went out tramping beyond Mirror Lake to find their tree, and he and Charlotta the Fifth decorated it with Cecily directing from the sofa. Cecily commissioned Charlotta to do shopping for her, and Shirley scoured the shops of Lake Placid every day after he finished work, looking for the perfect gift for his young wife. He found plenty for the others in their life--a vanity set for Charlotta, matching angel ornaments, one looking left and the other right (just like his mother's china dogs), for the unborn twins, a fancy pipe for his father-in-law, a book of poetry for his mother … Shirley had a knack for finding gifts.

He even discovered the perfect present for his pet sister, Di: a small china owl to sit on her desk at the Shirley-Stedman Home in Toronto. The owl itself was brown and white, nothing fancy, but the artist had whimsically added a pair of spectacles to its pointed face, and the round eyes behind them were the exact same grey-green as Di's own.

He could find nothing for Cecily, however. What did one get for one's wife of less than two years, who was going to be--be--be in Heaven before next Christmas? How could there possibly be a gift that could express all of Shirley's love and joy and sorrow?

So he continued to search, and continued to find nothing.

* * *

"Charlotta made cookies today," Cecily said gaily, as Shirley walked in after work December 23.

Shirley raised his eyebrow as he bent to kiss his wife. "Charlotta has made cookies every day since our American Thanksgiving."

"Yes, but these are her special cookies, made from an old family recipe, that only gets dug out at Christmastime," Cecily explained.

"I am sure they will be delicious," Shirley said, nodding a friendly hello at their young housekeeper, who flushed in delight.

"Not as good as if Miss Cecily had made 'em," she said loyally.

"Oh Charlotta, I was never very good in the kitchen," Cecily said, laughing.

Charlotta looked mutinous, for she loved her mistress fiercely, and wished to attribute her with every virtue under the sun, real or imagined. Before she could protest, a timer went off in the kitchen, and she dashed back to her domain.

"You look quite festive," Shirley said, seating himself on the floor by the sofa.

Cecily was wearing a pine-green skirt and cream sweater, with a green bow holding her chestnut curls back from her delicate face. Shirley noted without seeming to that her cheeks were more flushed than usual, and her eyes glittered feverishly. Morris had told him that would happen as the pregnancy progressed, but the loving husband's heart still sank at these signs of her growing weakness.

"I do so love Christmas," she said happily, her small white hand stroking Shirley's brown head. "Oh, but dearest, I must warn you--" she lowered her voice-- "Charlotta wrapped all the presents she purchased for me. I told her I could do it, but she insisted, so you must compliment her on how nice they look, despite what you may really think."

Shirley promised to be exquisitely careful of Charlotta's feelings.

"And how was work today, dearest?" Cecily asked.

Shirley obediently told her a little bit about his latest project, but in the back of his mind, a numbness was growing. It just seemed so unreal, sitting there like any normal couple, talking about work and wrapping presents and the decorations their neighbours were putting up, and knowing all the while that every day Cecily was slipping a little further away, away from him and their children and their future.

It was not at all how he had envisioned their second Christmas.

* * *

The next day, Christmas Eve, Shirley's office closed early. As usual, he went downtown to browse through the shops, slightly panicked in his search now.

"Leaving things a bit late, aren't you, dearie?" asked one shop owner, a tiny apple-cheeked woman with twinkling brown eyes, who reminded Shirley just a bit of the popular images of Mrs. Santa Claus.

"Not intentionally," he said, smiling wryly despite his clouded emotions.

"Ah," she said wisely. "Having a hard time finding something for your sweetheart, are you?"

"My wife," Shirley said absently, fingering a delicate filigree snowflake ornament.

The woman clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "Tchah! I should have seen that." Shaking her head, she bustled out from behind the counter. "Well, let me see if I can help you find something. What sort of interests does your wife have?"

"Well, she likes poetry, and art, and anything beautiful and delicate …" Shirley hesitated, and then without even knowing why, found himself--the shy, reserved one!--telling this sympathetic woman all about his and Cecily's troubles.

"You see, she was very ill before we married--that's why we're here, in the Adirondacks, I'm a Canadian really--and then we just found out a few months ago that she's carrying twins, and the doctor says she's not strong enough to survive giving birth to two at once, and so we only have until this spring, and this is our last--our last Christmas--" He had to stop; tears were dangerously close to the surface.

He was mostly appalled at himself for sharing so much with a complete stranger, but a small part of him felt relief. He'd been carrying this burden alone for too long. While his family was sympathetic, they were too far away to give much practical comfort (not to mention that most of the women all started to cry whenever they thought about losing Cecily, which made Shirley feel like he needed to comfort them, instead), and Cecily's parents were so distraught over their daughter's fate that talking to them was horribly painful.

"Well," said the shop owner quietly, her calm voice acting as a balm to his strained nerves, "I can see why you've been having difficulties. How to get something of lasting value, when your greatest treasure will only be here for a few more months?"

That was Shirley's dilemma so perfectly that he could only nod in agreement and wonder if this woman maybe really wasn't the wife of the all-wise, all-knowing St. Nicholas.

"Everything I think of has morbid overtones," he went on. "Like this snowflake. It's beautiful, delicate … and snowflakes melt and are gone in the spring. We promised each other, Cecily and I did, that we would keep joyful and make the most of the days remaining to us, but …"

The woman patted his arm sympathetically. "My husband, God rest his soul, passed on thirty years ago, and I still feel the loss." She scratched her head thoughtfully. "Well, we don't want anything that will bring your lady wife distress, or that will make you want to weep every time you look at it. Hmm … I have it! Just the thing."

"What?" Shirley asked eagerly.

She motioned for him to bend his head so his ear was next to her mouth, despite the fact that they two were the only ones in the store, and whispered to him.

"You're right," Shirley said, a warm glow of relief spreading through him. "That is perfect. But … you don't sell any of those things here. You won't be making any sales from this."

The woman shrugged her shoulders, supremely indifferent to silly little things like profits and sales. "What does that matter, if you can bring happiness to your wife?"

Impulsively, Shirley hugged her. "Thank you."

She blushed like a young lass. "Go on with you … wait one moment." She darted into the back, and returned in a moment with a tissue-wrapped package. "A gift from me to you. Open it Christmas evening, when your wife is sleeping."

Shirley took it in his hand, thanked her again with his heart in his eyes.

* * *

On Christmas morning, Shirley, Cecily, and Charlotta opened their presents in the warm light of the fire and the glow of the candles tied to the fir branches. Shirley gravely complimented Charlotta on her wrapping skills as he undid the clumsy packages.

The fur-lined hat and gloves from Cecily were just the thing for keeping him warm on days when he had to work in the field, and Charlotta's hand-knit scarf wouldn't look too garish once it was tucked within his coat.

Charlotta herself was pleased almost to the point of tears over her stylish cloche hat and deerskin gloves, a joint present from Shirley and Cecily.

Cecily opened a book of poetry from Charlotta (Shirley suspected their young handmaiden had written to Grandmother Lavender for suggestions), and then she looked curiously at the two packages Shirley laid in her lap, one large and square, the other a small, slim rectangle.

"What's this?"

"Open it," Shirley said with a smile.

She opened the small one first, to reveal an elegant fountain pen. "This is lovely, Shirley, but I don't understand …" glancing over at the desk in the corner, wherein resided half a dozen pens.

"Now the big one," Shirley said.

Cecily tore away the wrapping and saw a big, old book of fairy tales, complete with engravings and beautiful colour illustrations.

"See how large the margins are?" Shirley explained, moving nearer and putting his arm around her. "The pen is for you to write notes. It's for our children. I know how much you love fairy tales, so this way you can still 'tell' them to the little ones. After … after you are gone, I'll read the stories to them, with your notes, and then it'll be as if you are the one reading them."

"Oh!" Cecily's eyes glowed in the firelight with tears, and Charlotta found it suddenly imperative that she dash out to the kitchen to check on the cinnamon rolls in the oven.

Shirley watched Cecily anxiously. "Is it all right? Do you like it? I wanted to find something meaningful, something that would be more than just a piece of jewellery or a book. It's not--dearest? I didn't mean to make you cry."

Cecily wiped her eyes. "Oh no, these are good tears. It's a wonderful present, Shirley, absolutely perfect. However did you think of it?"

Shirley smiled, relieved. "That is a story in itself."

* * *

That night, after everyone else was abed and asleep, Shirley crept back downstairs. He lit a couple of candles on the tree again, just enough to give him some light, and opened the gift the shop owner had given him.

It was a silver snowflake, even more delicate and lovely than the one Shirley had seen in the front of the shop. He smiled to himself and wrapped his hand around it, holding it tightly.

His beloved snowflake may melt in the spring, but part of her would remain with him, and with their children, forever.

* * *

**A/N**: This was both wonderful and really hard to write. Shirley of Avonlea was the very first fanfiction I ever wrote, and I must confess and Shirley and Cecily are still among my favourites of all my characters. So it was delightful to revisit them, but also so hard writing something AFTER they've found out about her impending death without making it too depressing. Hopefully I found the right blend of sorrow and hope--and joy, because it is, after all, the season of peace and joy!

I'm thinking of a Jane/Bran Christmas story next, maybe also a Peter/Jocelyn story. Valancy/Barney, of course, is also sloshing around in my brain ... other than that, I'm not sure. Any requests?


	3. Brothers

"Our first Christmas together, cariad." Bran Samuels smiled happily at his wife, who beamed back at him out of her splendid marigold eyes.

"Who would have thought it would be in Wales?"

"Do you regret moving here from Canada right before the holidays?"

Jane Samuels nee Stuart shook her head. "No. I would have wanted our first Christmas--ours and little Lewis--to be spent with just us anyhow, and if we were still home--I mean, still in Canada--my parents would never have let us be."

Bran twisted his mouth into a wry smile. "I don't think your father will ever forgive me for taking you away like this."

"Don't be silly," Jane chided lovingly. "My father will never forgive you for marrying me--taking me away just added insult to injury." She sighed, shook her head. "Strange, after Dad suffered so much through Grandmother's selfish attachment to Mother, that he should be the one to try to bind me to him through guilt."

"Yes, I still think your mother has a sneaking fondness for me."

"It's your charm, darling. Very few women are immune to it."

"Except you, of course," Bran said in the tone of one stating the obvious.

"Of course," Jane agreed matter-of-factly.

Their banter might have turned to something more had not little Lewis, just over a year old, not chosen that moment to announce he had awoken from his nap. And was hungry. And wanted food immediately, if not sooner.

"He's your son," Jane sighed over her shoulder at Bran as she went to fetch their lord and master.

* * *

"Did you ever think our first Christmas together as husband and wife would also include our daughter?"

Jocelyn Samuels smiled up at her husband as she cradled Baby Evie in the rocking chair. "These war weddings do make things a little different. I never thought I'd spend Christmas anywhere but England, either at our home or Freddie's."

"Do you regret not marrying Freddie? You could have been a countess by now, hosting a glamourous Christmas party for all his noble friends, the toast of London. Instead of which, you are tucked away in a tiny stone cottage in a remote corner of Prince Edward Island, Canada, with no one near but your poor, untitled husband and baby girl."

Jocelyn shook her head. "Peter, do you really need me to tell you again that I'd rather be married to you than the king of England--and certainly I'd rather have you and Evie in a secluded cottage than Freddie and his estate?"

Peter shook his head. "No. I just like to hear you say it." And the smile he gave her was so cheeky and triumphant that she could do nothing but laugh.

Evie woke slightly at her mother's low laughter. She blinked her cornflower eyes, the same shade as her father's, and smiled sleepily up at her mother.

"Mama," she said, and Jocelyn's heart turned over.

"Freddie couldn't have given me any gift worth more than this."

* * *

As a young medical student, newly released from service in the RAF, Bran couldn't afford to pay much for rent. Jane was hoping eventually to find some sort of office secretarial work, but they hadn't been in Great Britain long enough for her to either find work, or find someone she trusted to watch Lewis during the day, while she was working and Bran was at classes.

Consequently, their home was currently a tiny, draughty, poorly-built house; their Christmas tree was little more than a scraggly pile of branches with some tinsel and homemade ornaments; they all three slept in one bedroom (because there was only one); and their Christmas dinner would certainly be no roast goose and plum pudding.

Jane had spent Christmas in many different places over the years--a large, rich, unfriendly house in Toronto; a small, beloved house on Prince Edward Island, surrounded by friends and family; a larger, but still well-loved house near Lake Ontario; and, most recently, military headquarters in England. She had met all of them (except those early, miserable years in the Kennedy house, when she was still Jane Victoria and completely cowed by Grandmother), with her usual imperturbable good nature and unflappable humour.

None of them, though, not even those first few Christmases with Mother and Dad and Lyssa, even came close to matching the joy she felt now, here with Bran and Lewis in their tiny, poorly-heated, shabbily-decorated, first home.

* * *

Jocelyn's father and grandfather, for many generations back, almost as many as England itself, had been squires of their village. Even Freddie's family, the earls of Whitmore, hadn't been there as long. Every year, ever since Jocelyn was a tiny child, her family would host a Christmas party for all the children in the village, rich and poor. It was the one time of year that all could mingle together without any sense of superiority or inferiority, all barriers down. They always had an enormous tree in the drawing room, glittering with candles and ornaments and garland; wreaths hung in every window and from each door; candles lighted every corner, guiding all who would come.

As Jocelyn's mother had died when she was young, Jocelyn herself had always acted as the lady of the house on those occasions. She remembered herself as a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, gravely thanking everyone for coming and assisting a small girl in unwrapping a china doll, one that Jocelyn herself had helped pick out several weeks before.

Things had changed, obviously, during the war, but still Jocelyn felt herself the "lady of the manor," so to speak, and even when Reed Hall was turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, she'd managed to put together a form of Christmas celebrations.

She'd been organising large-scale parties for years. In one sense, Peter was right; she was well suited to life at Freddie's countess.

She'd spoken truth, though. In all her years of party-planning, she'd never been so happy, so fulfilled, as she was right now, with no one nearby but her husband and small daughter. This Christmas was the first she could remember which she would spend with no one but family.

It was glorious.

* * *

One two separate continents, two very different brothers and their wives and children, celebrated Christmas in two very different fashions. One thing, however, remained constant for them both.

It was a day marked by love and joy.


	4. Starlight

When Valancy and Barney Redfern returned from their honeymoon tour around the world, they brought with them a special gift from Egypt: a five-year old girl with liquid eyes like chocolate, named Rasha. They found her living in abject poverty, her parents dead, her uncle planning to sell her to a "house of ill repute," as Valancy explained gravely to Cousin Georgiana, who was torn between admiration and horror at Dossie adopting a child like this. Barney had first put the fear of God (or Allah) into the uncle, and then paid him twice as much as he would have received from the brothel, to take Rasha away.

She, poor thing, had never known any kindness in her short life, but even by the time they reached Canada she was starting to respond to her adopted parents' smiles and gentleness. She'd even picked up a little English, which was fortunate since Barney's Arabic was limited and Valancy's non-existent.

Old Doc Redfern was delighted--"tickled pink"--at his first granddaughter. Mrs. Frederick Stirling was less pleased: she disapproved of foreigners on principle, and Arabs on religious scruples. The Redfern millions silenced any overt criticism she might otherwise have given, though, and so little Rasha Redfern soon settled into life in Montreal with remarkable simplicity.

* * *

Barney and Valancy's original plan had been to spend winters in Montreal, summers in their Blue Castle in Mistawis. With Rasha, however, Valancy in particular was too eager to introduce her to their island paradise to wait until next summer. They decided to spend Christmas in Mistawis and return to Montreal after the new year.

They invited Barney's father to join them, and he, with his habitual good cheer, gave up Christmas in comfort to indulge his children and granddaughter.

"What will it be like, Mama?" Rasha asked on the trip out. She was fascinated enough by the snow and ice; an island in the middle of a lake seemed like something out of a fairy story to her.

Valancy, who had long ago resigned herself to never being a mother (and didn't regret it greatly, as the only examples of motherhood she had was her mother or Aunt Wellington), still marvelled at the thrill she felt every time Rasha called her "mama."

"You'll have to wait and see," Barney cut in, leaning across Valancy to wink at Rasha. "I don't want anything to spoil your first glimpse of it."

Rasha had already begun to shyly, quietly love Valancy, but to Barney she gave her whole-hearted adoration. She gazed up at him with that smile that had first won him over in an Egyptian marketplace when she was covered in dirt and flies.

"Faith, Moonlight," he murmured to Valancy asRasha turned her attention back out the train window. "I didn't know it was possible for a man's heart to feel this way. First you, and now Rasha … so much for my reputation as a bitter misanthrope."

Valancy laughed at him with her eyes and kissed him on the nose.

They disembarked the train at Deerwood, but did not stop by Valancy's old home to with them a "Merry Christmas." Neither Barney nor Valancy wanted Rasha's first taste of their beloved home to be spoiled by either sharp criticism or false flattery. Doc Redfern, for all that he was--well, to be blunt--crude, was at least honest and wholesome. He'd accepted Rasha as his granddaughter as easily as he'd accepted Valancy as his daughter, and was prepared to lavish every worldly good they might desire on them, but at least it was out of love.

Barney had an ice-boat … Rasha gasped with mingled horror and excitement at the idea of all that water being truly frozen … and they all whizzed out to the island, Doc Redfern suffering in heroic silence in the middle of the boat, Valancy rejoicing in returning to her Blue Castle, this time with a child of her heart with them.

Barney leaped out as soon as the boat touched the shore of the island, turned back to gather Rasha in his arms.

"This, dear one, is our Blue Castle."

It was only a simple wooden house, nestled comfortably in among the pine trees, with snow falling all around and covering the ground in a blanket of white. Certainly Doc Redfern's prosaic eyes could see nothing special about it.

To Rasha, however, it was the most glorious castle she could ever have imagined--and she was its princess, returning from a long exile in captivity.

Her eyes shone so luminously at the sight that then and there she earned herself a nickname like her mother's; where Valancy was always Moonlight to Barney, Rasha now became Starlight.

"Star of wonder, star of light, Star with royal beauty bright," Valancy hummed.

Christmas carols, Doc Redfern understood, and he joined in with goodwill. "Westward leading, still proceeding,"

Rasha snuggled down contentedly in Barney's arms as Valancy and Doc Redfern harmonised to a finish.

"Guide us to thy perfect light."


End file.
